Ridiculous NTFS overhead on a partition

[Jeff Johnson [MVP: VB]]

I have a drive partitioned into 4 volumes (1 primary partition and 1
extended partition with 3 logical drives). The second logical drive in the
extended partition is a 10GB partition which is my boot partition, to use
proper NTFS terminology. In other words, it's where my WINDOWS folder
lives*. This partition has a 4K cluster size.

If I select all files and folders (and yes, I can see hidden and system
files) in the root of this drive and go into Properties, I see the following
information:

Size: 4.97 GB (5,340,624,564 bytes)
Size on disk: 4.98 GB (5,349,520,330 bytes)

If I go into the properties of the disk itself, I see this:

Used space: 10,703,122,432 bytes (9.96GB)
Free space: 30,834,688 bytes (29.4MB)

As far as our old friend mathematics is concerned, using the larger "size on
disk" value, the files themselves are taking 49.98% of the used space. That
suggests to me that my disk overhead is a whopping 50.02%!! That's insane.

Yes, I have defragmented. Worthless.

No, I have not backed up my disk, reformatted, and restored. This I consider
a last resort, and I'm posting to ask if anyone has recommendations on what
I might do to avoid this action or if I have no other choice.




*Yes, it should probably be bigger

 

[Star Fleet Admiral Q]

Check the "System Volume Information" folder for your missing disk space -
that's where "System Restore" hides it's restore points.

 

[Jeff Johnson [MVP: VB]]

Check the "System Volume Information" folder for your missing disk space -
that's where "System Restore" hides it's restore points.

Ho-ly CRAP! I always left that folder deselected because of the error
message I'd get, but I finally added permissions for myself and took a look.
It's all there! Now the problem is that System Restore is GPF'ing every time
I start it so I can't manage the restore points.

 

[Jeff Johnson [MVP: VB]]

Ho-ly CRAP! I always left that folder deselected because of the error
message I'd get, but I finally added permissions for myself and took a look.
It's all there! Now the problem is that System Restore is GPF'ing every time
I start it so I can't manage the restore points.

I found some info about reinstalling System Restore via sr.ini and it
worked. Only 285MB in that folder now.